


Lapsaria

by Your_Correspondent



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Emotions, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:33:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25375483
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Your_Correspondent/pseuds/Your_Correspondent
Summary: Star Wars. A visit to the local oracle imparts a vision of scandalous implications, a secret that stands to ruin lives and fell empires. Romance and Action. Heads up, contains a few explicit details. Ft: Reylo
Relationships: Rey/Kylo Ren/Ben Solo





	Lapsaria

GENESIS

I

Come traveller.

Invoke the muse.

Ascend the temple stair

inhale the fumes

that crest upon the air

in spirals, spumes

renounce your form

and step into my eye--

We are a bird.

Below us is a plain, a swath of trees, a river bed.

On a steep embankment lined with hardened clay, a woman sits, half-naked, semen drying on her breasts.

Two months ago the plain was flooded and the valley stammered with echoing hooves of rain. Then, patiently, the valley emptied, swallowed it's shining burden like a tongue. The rain went out like stars behind a ship. The valley swelled to ripening, then cracked.

An hour ago two figures moved across the land into the shadow of its cliffs, arranged themselves around each other, floundered, then lay still. Now there is only one. A woman.

She sits, as if in shock, anointed by the stains of lust that minutes ago possessed her. For her, in her, time has ceased to move. Around her time is slurring, slowed by thirst.

Meters from her feet the ghost of a stream, now just inches of brown water, flows silently across the clay. Ripples shiver into being, lit by a breath of wind. Deep in her eye a flash of heat recalls his shape, for a moment all she sees is nakedness, frantic spasms, the sweep of muscle moving under skin.

The woman looks around. She is shaded by a jxin tree and hidden by a screen of laurels. Her robes are skewed and streaked with dust; her bodice hangs open. Her legs are bare and scratched. She does not move.

Eight minutes ago the man was inside her. His mouth was open, and his face transfigured. His cloudy scent rolls off her body. Time hovers, limitless. He is still inside her. They are locked together, arching, moaning, breathing in each other's cries. She overflows. The valley vanishes. Then time begins.

She inhales sharply and lurches to her feet. Her robes drag, tangled and unspooling; her breeches are gone entirely, kicked off somewhere in the bushes. Her lover has been gone nine minutes now.

The laurels nod and sway, and minutes pass. A low wind murmurs through the valley. _Where is he. Where is he. Where is he._ She listens for his footsteps. The air is hot and close, but her hands are cold. Dust floats. Sweat dries. The stream pours soundlessly. Birds pass across the sun. The woman waits.

Four minutes ago her lover sighed and rolled off her, stood, and slowly dressed.

“Wait here.” He said. “I'll just be a second.”

She thought he was taking a piss.

She sprints up the embankment, through the laurels, across the folded clay, and over the rocky shoulder, scarred with rivulets.

It crumbles at the strike of her foot.

But when she finds the top, there's nothing there.

Only an expanse of empty plains.

She reviews the facts.

He's gone. He isn't here.

He could be in danger--

An idle thought, without conviction.

But possible.

That he was seized by some ranging animal, and dragged into the cliffs.

She knows it isn't likely. The way he wields his saber, few animals could match him.

Perhaps he wandered off?

He doesn't seem the type to get lost.

The empty space is like a riddle, dreamy and perplexing.

The plains extend in cryptic measure, tacit,

undisclosing.

She's not quite ready to panic.

She has the nagging sense that there's an explanation,

something that she's missing.

Her head is full of wool.

He must be somewhere.

But where could he have gone?

The knowledge, when it arrives, hits her in the stomach like a stone.

He isn't lost.

There was no accident. His absence is on purpose. He did it knowingly.

Intention, cool and final. A calculated insult.

He isn't hurt.

The laurels weave.

A whirling starts up in her skull.

_This was not supposed to happen._

She shakes her head. The clenching in her belly creeps upwards to her throat.

_Thi swas nots upposed--_

She is rocking, back and forward, arms loose and fingers splayed for balance, as if expecting an attack.

_tohapp en,thi swas no tsupposed--_

The wind has died, the valley poised in suffocating stillness.

_tohappen,this --_

She says the name of God.

It hangs in the air, obscene. She studies it.

She remembers, suddenly, that the blossoms of the jxin tree look like hands in prayer.

\-- _Jedi-ani, Jedi-ani, silence of the All--_

The rend repeats.

For her, in her, time has ceased.

This is what the holy ones call purity. She is utterly empty, as she has never been. Not once before has she felt like this, in rest, in training, or in battle. Or in prayer. Such perfect ease. It's sumptuous. Electrifying.

Her senses come alive. For a moment he surrounds her, pouring like an aura from her open body. His traces cling to her-- his sweat, his smell, his issue crusting on her skin. The feeling of his life enfolds her. She breathes him in. She feels his hands and it is thrilling as the shock of water, cold and bright.

Her senses sing, the forest pools in shades of tension, clarity and softness. The laurels and the river and the tree are of a single substance, she loses sense of where her body ends and they begin. She is dissolving. She looks down at her hands. They're trembling.

It is her heartbeat tapping on her temples, rattling like a salvo of ammunition on the hull of a ship, in waves, in avalanches, that wakes her. She feels a surge of blood like swift white water moving through her, deafening, and in an instant she is ripped back into time.

She turns suddenly, as if about to run.

_No, God._

_Please not this._

She charges, and pulls up short, confused.

She looks for an escape.

_please--_

_n op lea se--_

_n o ot t hi i i s--_

The valley seems to close around her.

_\--NopleasenopleasenopleasenonoNonNo NO--_

It is a minute or so before realizes she is screaming. Shards of image, visions of the future rush her all at once. He'll tell them what she's done. He will tell them, and they will know. Or he won't, but they'll know, regardless.

They'll see it in her eyes. The creeping change. The feeling that she's grown unclean-- selfish, lavish; insolent and weak.

Soon, very soon, her master will look up and feel her broken vows like a death. They rang out in the void of space, a white-hot cry of spirit tearing from the body. The proof is absolute. An aching deep within her flesh. A rip, a traitor's wound, a void erupting in her deepest parts. A knowledge.

This is how her life will end. They will confiscate her weapon, change her name, disown her, strip her, parade her for their allies, shame her. Or perhaps, in their great mercy, they will simply leave her to discover whatever life is possible for a person of her circumstances.

Either way, she'll never dress in white again.

But she'd agreed to that. When she grabbed a fistful of dark hair and pulled his mouth to hers.

Elusive thrust. Why had she done that?

Surely she hadn't thought he'd marry her?

No. She hadn't thought of anything.

Except she had.

What-- that he'd kneel to her, confess his love, renounce his throne?

Not quite.

She hadn't thought there would be any renouncing.

Then what?

Her mind contorts, denying. But the tearing in her chest, the thin, childish cry erupting from her throat informs her, roughly, that she had been relying on his tenderness. Sobs are swelling in her throat; she gasps and tries to take in air, but her breaths are shallow and choking.

An incandescent rage is clawing up inside of her-- she wants to scream at the violet skies, she wants to hunt him down and shame him, to mock him and berate him and console him; she wants to seize him and demand his love.

What happened to his passion? His persecuted mien, his skittish overtures? The way he'd tried to court her?

A surge, and it was suddenly discarded; all forgotten.

What had seemed like love was only concupiscence.

He knew what he was doing. His artlessness, his gloom, his admiration-- all an act.

He'd pleaded for her help, and then deceived her.

She screams in rage, but the echo is a cry grief.

He was supposed to kiss her.

To put his hand up to her face, and ask her something.

What?

She cannot think.

What could he have said, that would have changed it?

He, who razes empires and extends no mercy?

But she does not ask the question.

Only what her answer would have been.


End file.
